COURT). For legal definition of newspapers in the strict sense reference should be made to the article on PRESS LAWS, but for the purpose of this article the term comprises daily or weekly publications mainly concerned with the reporting, illustrating and commenting upon current events. (For magazines and the like see PERIODICAL. ) Early History.—In the days before printing the earliest equivalent of the modern newspaper was the series of public an nouncements called Acta Diurna issued during the Roman empire and posted up in the same way as the French postal affiches of to-day and copied by scribes for dispatch to provincial subscribers. A like series of official reports was made in China as early as the 7th century, but in a general sense right up to the invention of printing (q.v.) the dissemination of news in all countries was by the slow process of word of mouth and by private letter. After the discovery of printing pamphlets or single sheets announcing some item of news were often issued.
It is now generally supposed that the first of them to be pub lished regularly was a German publication the Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, first printed in 1609. Then came the Antwerp Nieuwe Tijdingen in 1616, and in May 1622 appeared what is now con ceded to be the first English newspaper proper, The Weekly Newes from Italy, Germany, etc., London, published by Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer. These enterprising editor-publishers, however, had a formidable competitor in Nathaniel Butter, a free man of the Stationers' Company, who in June 1605 had momen tarily satisfied the public demand for sensation, as greedy then as it is now, by reports of two dramatic murder trials in York shire, one of which was the Calverley case. Butter had published Newes from Spain in 161r, and when the Weekly Newes appeared he almost immediately brought out a rival quarto sheet named Newes from Most Parts of Christendom, and its success was so great that a Butter-Archer fusion followed. Their joint produc tion was called the Newes of the Present Week. It must not be assumed that during the whole period this journal was published regularly every week, but it is the earliest continuous English newspaper, so far as known to historians. In 1638 Charles I. gave Butter the right of publishing foreign news on payment of f 10 a year towards the repair of St. Paul's cathedral, but in the following year he fell under the displeasure of the licenser of the press. Despite the latter's decree of suppression Butter brought
out his paper all the same, and he lived to a great age, dying in 1664. Archer had died in 1634.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the news writer was well estab lished. Formerly he did not fulfil an independent calling but was a retainer in the service of some great noble whom he kept equipped with such intelligence as his master required, but the gradual spread of learning led to a demand, especially in districts remote from London, for a regular supply of news. For a long period the purveyors of these letters, who must be regarded as journalists, syndicated (to use an expression familiar to modern journalism) their information in manuscript form, and there was more than one organisation for the interchange of letters between London and the provinces. Of these early news-letters good examples are in the Paston Letters and the Sydney Papers.
There is in the British Museum a Mercurius Gallobelgicus, the work of D. M. Janson, of Cologne. A fairly thick octavo book, giving a Latin chronicle of events from 1587 to 1594, it is really a sort of annual register. It was continued down to 1635. The Mercurius Gallobelgicus is chiefly interesting because. by circulating in England, it started the idea of a periodical sup plying foreign news, and apparently became to English contem poraries a type of the newfangled news-summaries; and the title Mercurius or Mercury—as representing the messenger of the gods—thus became a common one for English periodicals. On June 1st, 1619, Ralph Rounthwaite entered at Stationers' Hall A Relation of all matters done in Bohemia, Austria; Poland, Sletia, France, etc., that is worthy of relating, since the 2nd of March 1618 (1619 N.S.) until the 4th of May. Again at the be ginning of November 1621 Bartholomew Downes and another entered in like manner The certain and true newes from all parts 'In the following section have been incorporated certain sections of the articles by E. Edwards in the qth edition and by H. Chisholm in the later editions of the Encyclokedia Britannica.